


Saved

by KatLeePT



Category: Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:08:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5851711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatLeePT/pseuds/KatLeePT
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jareth reflects on how he met his wife and she changed his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saved

"It was the first time I've ever had that line turned on me," Jareth reminisces, his handsome smile reflected by his happily shining eyes. The Goblins watch their King steadfastly as they skitter throughout the throne room. The infant in his lap gurgles, prompting a deep chuckle from his Highness. "Yes, I know. It's an easy enough line to use, old enough too, but I have that bloody script I have to follow."  
  
He scowls, his memories shifting to another time. "What can I say?" he queries, and nobody dares answer. "If I can give you one piece of advice to remember, my son: If you ever try to take over the world, whatever you do do not get caught. The punishments are infinitely tiresome and lengthy." The mere thought of the eternity he has to spend serving as a strange teacher to teenage girls is enough to make the King yawn with boredom.  
  
"What?" he softly questions the child watching him hide his yawn behind three, gloved fingers. "You try spending a century or two catering to the whims of teenage girls, and you'll be exhausted, too." He grins suddenly. "But it isn't all bad. It's how your mother found me, after all."  
  
"I'll never forget that night," he continues into his story, settling back down into his throne that now has black, plush pillows to make it far more comfortable than it ever was before his beloved's arrival into his life. "Every girl before had been impressed by that crystal ball and the little spiel I have to give with it being a gift not for an ordinary girl who takes care of a screaming baby and all that -- thank God you don't scream more often --, but Delvira wasn't even fazed by it. Even when I turned it into a snake and threw it at her, she just caught the reptile and wrapped it around her neck. Then she told me to look at what she was offering me," Jareth grins widely, "and dropped her dress."  
  
"That was all it took," Jareth reflects, shaking his blonde head in amazement at the memory of that night. None of the many girls whom he had been forced to woo over the centuries had ever chosen him. They had always picked their baby brothers over him, thereby keeping his sentence ongoing.  
  
Delvira had not only not chosen the child over him; she had used the child to lure him to her, and once he'd gotten there and seen what she was offering, there had simply been no refusal or doubt. How could he possibly turn away the second most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, after all? (The first, of course, being his own reflection.) He'd been happy ever since, happier than he'd ever been before his attempts to conquer the world and happier even than he'd ever believed he'd be again. And he owed it all to his new wife.  
  
He bounces the baby on his knee, watching the little one's fangs shining. "You've got quite the life ahead of you. There will be trials. You'll be tempted; we all are. And you'll get lonely down here. But it will still be a better life for you by far than that orphanage had in store for you. They were going to sell you to the top bidder, you know, but your mother carried them enough money and rubies to end the auction before it ever began." Lost in his memories, Jareth whispers fondly, "She saved us both, you know."  
  
The baby gurgles almost as though he can understand his adopted father's meaning. He then giggles and claps his pudgy hands together. Jareth laughs both at the child and himself. He really has grown soft to think that a child might understand him! He spends far too much time with this thing. He's only here to free him when he gets older, after all.  
  
But then . . . He's already free. He's already happy, free, and in love. Delvira's done all that for him and more. This land underground is no longer a trap. He may still be cursed to have to deal with certain teenaged girls and their rituals of growing up, but he's not trapped. This is his land; the magic in it flows through his blood. He is King of all he surveys, and he's loved. He's truly loved for the first time in his life.  
  
His imperial smile sparkles. He opens his mouth to speak again but shuts it when his wife calls from the doorway. "Are you telling our little Werewolf fairy tale stories again?"  
  
His eyes lift to hers. "No," he answers, "I'm telling him how you saved me from all this boredom again."  
  
Delvira grins, her own fangs curving with her smile and glistening in the shadow where she stands. "Let me save you again," she whispers huskily. Jareth passes the baby to the nearest group of Goblins and, always ready, jumps to his booted feet. "Look what I've brought you," his wife tells him just as she told him that first night they met. She had dreamed of him, she'd told him, knew his pain from reading the stories about him, and had wanted to alleviate it. She'd done much more than just free him of pain.  
  
Gazing upon her undead beauty now, Jareth remembers that he'd always dreamed of her, too. He'd just never known that the woman in his dreams had been Delvira. He had never seen her face, but she had touched him with skilled hands. Her body had been as fiery as his own in passion, and she had loved him, really loved him for the first time in Jareth's immortal life. Yes, he reflects, beaming and taking his wife into his hands, Delvira was his dream lover in every sense of the phrase, and together, they were already making all their dreams come true. Maybe the Council had been wrong. It looked like he was going to have his happily ever after ending, after all.

  


The End

  


**Author's Note:**

> Delvira is the author's. All other characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.


End file.
